Paper short abstract:

Marine conservationists believe that Vezo have no tradition of reef tenure. Cognitive anthropology suggests that they might have a mental representation of tenure albeit unformulated in language. Vezo assert that reefs were made by god and cannot be owned by humans.

Paper long abstract:

"Unlike many areas of the Pacific, where customary management of coral reefs has been practiced by communities for centuries, Madagascar, like its neighbors in the western Indian Ocean, has no tradition of marine tenure " (Harris 2010).

Marine conservationists claim that fishing people of southwest Madagascar lack property rights in coral reefs. Cognitive anthropology suggests that much of what is known by humans is represented infra-linguistically. The mental scheme of common property may be implicit. But the people are explicit about the fact that reefs were made by god and cannot be owned by humans.

Based on the description of conventions of resource access by contiguous fishing villages, this paper aims to show that situated knowledge of species and habitats, and the practices of gleaning octopus and of naming places, are material representations of (count as making) enforceable claims. While the concept of reef lagoon tenure goes without saying, the material semiotics of the fishery is overt and must be elicited linguistically.